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JavaOne 2011!

It's that time of year again. I've got a few last minute things to pack and then I'm headed off to Oracle HQ to pick up my badge, the airport to pick up my trusty sidekick, Tonya, and then on to the Hilton in Union Square. Officially, JavaOne doesn't start until Sunday, and a lot of people won't get here until Monday. For us, it starts tonight. Kevin Farnham, our editor, and Frank Nikola, our Drupal engineer arrive tonight as well, and we'll spend all day Saturday at our annual Community Leads meeting. Between my team, the Kenai project team lead, and the various community leaders in attendance I'm expecting 19, and 8 of those are volunteers from the community. Those volunteers are coming from Brazil, Germany, and across the U.S. I think it says a lot about their commitment that they are willing to come in for an extra couple of days to attend this meeting every year.

Since we've moved to an infrastructure we fully control, this is the first time we'll be able to really hammer out a realistic roadmap for what we want to do in the next year. Big things on the horizon are a data center move and new hardware for the forge half of the site, a major upgrade to our mailing list software, and making project statistics available. We'll have more details to post next week.

On Sunday Tonya, Frank, and I will be going to the JUG conference for a bit, and then Sunday night we'll have a Java.net team dinner. Between the two engineering teams that run the site and our infrastructure team, we are scattered across the U.S. and Canada, and it will be the first time I meet a few people I've been working with for the last year or two face to face. I'm very much looking forward to it. After dinner I'll head down to Thirsty Bear to catch the tail end of the GlassFish party.

On Monday the Community Hub on Mason Street opens, and we'll be there staffing the Oracle Technology Network, and holding down the nearby couches throughout the day. We'll be there all week, and I hope you'll come by and say hello if you are attending JavaOne.

Monday night is the Oracle Technology Network party at Yerba Buena Gardens. This will be a crossover event with some folks from OpenWorld in attendance as well. Last year it was a great party - it's a beautiful time of year to be outdoors in the evening in San Francisco. Good entertainment. Good food. Good drinks. Good people.

Tuesday night is the JUG leads dinner. Wednesday is Appreciation Night - I didn't go last year because I was so tired. This year, Sting and Tom Petty might inspire me to get on the bus to Treasure Island.

We'll be doing more tweeting than ever this year to cover the event. I'll be talking about community stuff as it happens (@sonyabarry), Kevin will be attending talks and interviewing anybody who will talk to him (@kevin_farnham) and @java will also be sending out regular updates.